Chapter 5 - The Water Samples
The first documents from the bunker were not dramatic.
That made them more convincing.
Laboratory chain-of-custody forms.
Well numbers.
Dates.
Coordinates.
Concentration tables.
Compounds I recognized only because survey work sometimes intersects contaminated sites.
Trichloroethylene.
Tetrachloroethylene.
Other chlorinated solvents historically associated with metal cleaning and industrial degreasing.
Several samples had been collected recently.
Dad’s handwriting appeared beside coordinates.
He had been taking groundwater samples.
Not legally certified regulatory samples.
Screening samples.
Enough to know something required professionals.
The state environmental agency was notified.
So were attorneys.
Nobody announced that the water had caused cancer.
Nobody stood on television blaming one company for every illness in town.
The science was not there yet.
What the preliminary information supported was narrower.
There might be contamination beneath and around the property.
It required proper investigation.
The old plating plant next door had operated from 1948 until 1989.
Several companies owned it over time.
Northstar Holdings had recently acquired options on surrounding parcels through subsidiaries.
Including an option to purchase the club land.
Wade sat across from me in a temporary meeting room above a tire shop the club used while the clubhouse remained closed.
“Your dad thought Northstar knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That something was under us.”
“The bunker?”
“Maybe more.”
“Why didn’t he tell you?”
Wade rubbed his beard.
“Eli stopped trusting committees.”
“This isn’t a committee. It was his club.”
“Same thing after fifty people get opinions.”
Then he admitted Dad had fought the property sale hard.
At one meeting he said:
“If we sign before independent testing, we deserve whatever comes after.”
Wade thought he meant ordinary environmental due diligence.
Then another detail surfaced.
Northstar’s first purchase proposal contained an unusual clause.
The buyer would receive broad control over environmental investigation and remediation after closing.
The club would agree not to perform invasive testing before transfer without buyer approval.
Their attorney had flagged it.
Dad apparently circled it in red.
On his copy, he wrote:
WHY DO THEY CARE WHAT WE FIND BEFORE THEY OWN IT?
That question became the first thing in the case that felt larger than my father.
Then police returned his rugged computer.
Not unlocked.
But the exterior had one handwritten sticker on the bottom.
A password hint.
Not the password itself.
Three words.
ASK SADIE ABOUT MOM.
Wade looked at me.
“What does that mean?”
May you like
I knew immediately.
My father had built the most important lock in the bunker around a memory only I could open.
